1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image data sorting system and the method thereof. In particular, the present invention relates to the image data sorting system sorting a large amount of image data that is captured by a digital still camera effectively, conveniently, and quickly.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, when a large number of photographs using a film are sorted, each of the images is printed from a silver film into photograph form, the printed photographs are arranged on a desk, and the user often sorts the images by looking at the printed photographs. On the other hand, when a plurality of digital images is sorted by a computer, the user usually looks at the digital images that are displayed.
Japanese Patent Application Laying-Open No. H8-202607 discloses, when sorting the digital images, a method for managing the sorted image data by using a unit of a folder. Japanese Patent Application Laying-Open No. H11-164234 discloses a method for sorting the image data into a folder automatically based on attached information such as the image capturing data. When the user wants to sort the image data based on the target captured in the image or the visibility of the target in the image, the images before sorting are indicated on the display. If a large amount of image data is displayed at once, each of the images indicated on the display is very difficult to see. Therefore, to select a certain image, the user requires to look at the plurality of images and compare the image data indicated on the display, therefore sorting the image data requires a lot of time and causes a lot of problems.
If the user selects images to be a larger size on the display, the number of indicated images on the display decreases. This is different from sorting the photographs on the desk, because the amount of image data recognized at once decreases so that the sorting efficiency becomes inferior. In particular, the image for the construction report often captures a large amount of image data, and sorting the image data for the construction report requires processing of a large amount of image data, so that sorting the image data requires a lot of time and a high workload.
If all the image data is printed out and then sorted, matching the printed image with the indicated image data on the display requires a lot of attention and the matching is quite problematic.